The Void and the Cloudless Sky
by amonitrate
Summary: For the eight hundredth time Albert wondered what kind of magic dust Cooper sprinkled on the donuts to make the locals adore him like he was the Law Enforcement Messiah. Albert deals with the aftermath of Leland Palmer's death.


Yes, I wrote a missing scene fic. This one is nearly an AU; but I couldn't resist. Takes place during episode 2.09.

Warning that it has the weaknesses of all missing scene fics in that it assumes familiarity with the events in question. My only excuse is that there must have been some time between Leland's death and the conversation in the woods, because everyone was miraculously dry by then. Such goofs are the chinks in the wall where fic seeps in. Also, I [heart Albert.**  
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**The Void and the Cloudless Sky**

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"Don't be afraid," Cooper said, and Leland Palmer let out his last breath. And as he did the waterfall from the sprinklers ceased as if signaled by the presence of death, by Cooper's incantation. That's what it had been – a damn incantation – and though Albert felt a faint tickle of recognition like an itch in his brain nothing stepped forward to identify the source of Cooper's words.

Albert shivered, suddenly cold in the absence of water, and the need for a smoke hit like a freight train. He ignored the chill and the craving and glanced at the sheriff but Truman's shocked eyes were on the bowed back of Dale Cooper. Yeah, Albert knew the feeling. He'd been around Coop's brand of weirdness off and on for the last eight years. Didn't mean he'd ever got used to it flying at him from left field. And this took the damn cake. Palmer was clearly dead – his bladder had gone, mingling with the smell of blood to give the room a sour taint – but Cooper still leaned over the body and he'd started speaking again, this time in a murmur Albert couldn't pick up from his place at the wall.

It went on long enough for Albert's feet to go numb. He rose from the floor and circled the tableau until he stood over Cooper where he held the corpse in his lap, oblivious to the lake he was sitting in, to Albert and Truman and the whole damn world of the sane still going on around him. "If you're done whispering sweet nothings into the dead guy's ear," he started, but as soon as the words left his mouth he knew it was exactly the wrong thing to say.

Cooper's recitation didn't halt but his shoulders stiffened. He finished whatever verse he'd been in the middle of when Albert had broken the peace and then raised his head to look Albert in the eye. "Albert, I need a moment." The brittle edge of disappointment there brought Albert's craving for a smoke raging back.

"Yeah," Albert said, moving back to sit against the opposite wall. "Okay." He found the sheriff's eyes on him but the expected hostility just wasn't there. Instead something like understanding had passed over Truman's face. Albert crossed his arms over his chest and looked to the ceiling. He didn't need the local law to analyze the last few minutes for him – he could do that well enough himself.

Coop's mutters had ended but he hadn't otherwise moved, his face obscured by a dripping hank of black hair. He cradled the corpse in a soggy pieta, his hand still smoothing over Palmer's bloody forehead like he thought he could give the dead man comfort. The door to the cell opened and it was if the influx of fresh air broke some kind of spell. As Deputy Hawk stepped through the doorway Cooper let out a sigh, a shudder running through him. "We've got a problem upstairs," Hawk said to Truman, hushed, glancing sidelong at Cooper. There was an awed respect there and for the eight hundredth time Albert wondered what kind of magic dust Cooper sprinkled on the donuts to make the locals adore him like he was the Law Enforcement Messiah. Truman straightened and then stood up, hesitating, his reluctance to leave the eerie-ass scene - to leave Cooper - palpable. He caught Albert's eye and something Albert couldn't name passed between them and then Truman nodded and followed the deputy out of the cell.

Albert got the impression he'd been assigned Cooper-sitting duty. He sighed. It wouldn't be the first time.

He'd counted one thousand seven hundred and thirty-three holes in the ceiling tile above his head when he heard Cooper move at last. Coop eased Palmer's head off his lap and to the floor and then scrubbed his wet sleeve over his wet face. "I think my legs have fallen to sleep," he said. Taking that as some kind of obscure invitation Albert climbed to his feet again, his wet suit sticking to him in a clammy embrace, and reached for Cooper's hand. It was as chilled as a corpse fresh out of the morgue fridge.

Cooper-sitting. Right. Albert pulled him to his feet and caught him when he stumbled. "What was that?" he asked, and he wasn't sure if he was referring to the verses Cooper had spoken, the last few hours, or the entirety of their relationship. Coop's eyes were dark, the usual open book of his expression faded and unreadable. He shook his head. Albert didn't press. Everything might seem like cheerful quirks and donut love in the world of Dale Cooper, but Albert had enough experience to know better.

The hair hanging into Cooper's eyes reminded Albert of the wide-eyed kid he'd first met and instantly hated in Pittsburgh, but the thin press of his lips broke the illusion. "Right," Albert said, and fished the crumpled pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. The first few were wet through, but the last had been protected by the box. His matches were another story. He shoved the pack back into his pocket and turned his attention to the body.

"I'll have Truman call Hayward. He's competent enough to get the body to the morgue. Cause of death seems obvious."

"Okay," Cooper said.

It wasn't really, but Albert shook it off for more immediate concerns. But before he could make the sensible suggestion that they go find clothes that weren't saturated with water – and in Cooper's case, stained with blood – Cooper finally looked him in the eye. "I need to stay with Leland until Doc Hayward gets here."

Hell. "Coop, he's dead. We can lock him in; no one will mess with him."

Cooper gave him a watery smile that did nothing to reassure him. "I need to stay with him." What he apparently didn't feel the need for was explanations. Albert figured he should have expected as much by now.

"Fine. I'll go make the call." He glanced back from the doorway to find Cooper leaning against the far wall of the cell, head bowed again, silent guardian to a man who had molested and murdered his own daughter. Albert shook his head and closed the door behind him.

When Albert returned to the cell Cooper hadn't moved from his position at the wall, as if no time at all had gone by. It had, in fact, been nearly a half an hour by the time he got a hold of Hayward and made the necessary arrangements. Keeping the incestuous relationships straight in these podunk towns might be more trouble than it was worth, but springing the death on Hayward without warning had left Albert with a sour stomach once he'd figured out that he'd forgotten Palmer and Hayward had been friends.

"The good doctor is calling in a buddy. The guy who did Laura's autopsy." Albert said. Cooper didn't react, didn't open his eyes, just stood there, like maybe he'd grown roots. "Coop?"

"I heard you." His voice carried a tattered edge, as if he'd been chatting to the corpse the whole time Albert had been gone.

"You're really gonna wait here?"

A hint of a grin. "Yeah, I really am."

Damn. Not that he'd expected anything different. It was just... Coop had always been a little funny about dead bodies. Not in a necrophiliac kind of way - but in a way that made Albert feel like a sicko for wanting to cut them open, even though he did it to give Cooper the answers he needed to put the bad guys away.

"You don't have to stay," Cooper was saying.

Albert blinked. "Who's going to drive your dripping ass back to the hotel if I leave?"

A bit of light returned to Cooper's face. His grin broadened, though his eyes were still focused on some distant plane. "Albert," he said. "Where would I be without you?"

The obvious answer was dead, but that had been a long time ago, and it wasn't the kind of thing cops talked about. Strike that - it wasn't the kind of thing most cops talked about. Including Albert. And he wasn't about to start now.

"Did you finish whatever it was you were doing?" It was as close to an apology for his earlier interruption as he was going to manage in this lifetime.

"Yes," Coop said. "I went as far as I could go, anyways."

"Cooper-"

Coop held up a hand. "Later, Albert. Not here."

Because the dead guy might be listening? He hadn't thought he'd spoken aloud, but Cooper let out a dry laugh that wasn't so much amused as... well, Albert didn't know what it was, but the guy was starting to give him the willies. Again. "Yes. Because he might be listening."

"Right." Albert joined him at the wall, ready to chew through a cigarette for the nicotine. Coop dropped back into his spaced-out stare at the body, and Albert tried to find something else to count besides ceiling tile holes. Lucky for him Hayward's friend must have broken a land speed record because he showed up with a passel of paramedics and a stretcher not too much later. Albert half expected Cooper to insist on riding with the body to the morgue but instead he just watched them take Palmer away and gave a little shiver before turning to Albert.

"You said something about dry clothes?"

Well, no, he hadn't. Not aloud anyways; but Albert wasn't ready to dig too deeply into Cooper's propensity towards mind reading right then. Coop just gave him a crooked grin and after promising they'd meet the sheriff back at the station in an hour followed Albert out to his car. By the time they hit the road he'd fallen back into inscrutable silence. As he drove Albert realized two things: nicotine withdrawal was a bitch, and Cooper had been favoring his right side again. He hated playing doctor to the living. Luckily his only regular patient was usually blessed with uncanny good health.

"It was from the Bardo Thodol," Cooper said, out of the clear blue sky, interrupting Albert's thoughts of wet bandages and opportunistic infections.

"The bardull-" Albert gave up and shook his head. "Coop, when was the last time you got some quality shut-eye?"

"Bardo Thodol. The Liberation Through Hearing in the Intermediate State." Coop glanced at him and flicked the car's heater to high. "Known in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead."

"Oh," Albert said. Well, that didn't really explain anything, but it was more than Cooper usually gave him in these situations. "And this-"

"Bardo Thodol," Coop offered.

"What was the point of it?"

"It was written as a guide through the stages between death and rebirth."

Uh-huh. "So you're saying Leland Palmer has already been reborn."

Cooper turned away, watching the endless lines of trees go by. "No. It takes time and I'm not a lama. I just picked up a few things here and there."

Here and there? Albert bet the only llamas within a hundred mile radius were the kind raised for their wool. "I'm sure you did your best," he managed. Cooper didn't react to the ever present underpinning of sarcasm so Albert left him alone. He couldn't have been more ecstatic to see the grand wooden edifice of the Great Northern Hotel rise above them at that moment. They were straying back into territory he'd rather not dwell on. At least not while soaked through to the skin and stone sober to boot.

"You've got twenty minutes," Albert said as they crossed the hotel's warm threshold. "And then I'm coming up to poke at your ribs." Cooper gave him a wan grin and vanished into the elevator.

Despite its sins of geography, the Great Northern had excellent showers. Albert hustled into a dry suit and left a sopping pile of castoffs in the bathroom before taking a quick smoke break. He glanced at his watch - it had been thirty minutes, which left enough time to prod at Cooper's gunshot wound before bundling him back into the car to meet the Sheriff. The car seats were going to be damp. He stole two dry towels from the rack in the bathroom, grabbed his med kit and took the stairs to the third floor.

Somehow he wasn't surprised to find Cooper's door unlocked. The man had been plugged three times in this very location ten days before and yet he hadn't grasped the simple task of locking his damn door against crazed locals. Albert was about to let fly with a stinging rebuke when he realized the room was too quiet. Coop lay on his side on the bed, passed out on top of the neatly folded blankets, still dressed in his wrinkled, damp suit.

Dammit. Albert prodded the closest shoulder. Cooper let out a long sigh and rolled over onto his back. This was going well. "Cooper. Come on. Time's a flying, here." Coop's eyelids fluttered and then he blinked a few times, his unfocused gaze on the ceiling above their heads.

"The owls are flying," Cooper said. "Not time."

Of course they were. Albert let that one go and pushed him towards the bathroom. Then he hung halfway out of the open window smoking another illicit cigarette and listening to the steady stream of the shower until Cooper appeared again in the main room, still blinking as if he hadn't quite made it back to the Land of the Awake and Sane. Well, the Land of the Awake, anyway. Albert had doubts about Coop's ability to get his hands on a passport to the Land of Sanity on the best of days, and this wasn't one of them.

"Sit," Albert said, and Cooper obeyed, perching on the edge of his mattress. Albert unwrapped the wide bandage from around his ribs, frowning at the ugly deep purple and greenish bruises around his sternum.

"Pain?"

"Yes."

"Any worse than it has been?"

"No."

"Taking anything for it?"

"Aspirin."

Albert dropped the old bandage to the blankets and waited until Cooper met his eyes. "Pain can do things to the human mind, not to mention—"

"I know." Well, yeah, of course he did.

Albert knew better than to ask, but he did anyway. "Want something stronger?"

Cooper swallowed. "Not now. But I've had trouble sleeping."

Judging from the circles under his eyes Albert bet that was an understatement, but he took it at face value and nodded. "I'll get you a prescription for tonight."

Relief passed over Cooper's face. "Thank you."

The bandage over the wound had gotten wet, so Albert pried it off as carefully as he could while Cooper clenched handfuls of blanket. The wound itself was redder than Albert would have liked but Hayward had done a passable job so he applied a fresh bandage and wrapped Cooper's ribs back up.

"I want to know if anything changes. The pain increases, you feel the least bit feverish – you tell me. Got that?"

"Yeah." Coop was breathless and lines had deepened around his mouth and eyes, but he managed to produce a smile. "Thank you."

Albert could have slugged him. "I should have told Gordon to pull you from the field."

"Why didn't you?" He seemed genuinely curious.

"Temporary insanity. Probably caught it from you." Albert swept up his kit, dumped the used bandages in the bathroom trash and left Cooper to finish dressing.

The towering stands of pines framing either side of the road back to the sheriff's station looked darker than ever and loomed over the car as if reaching toward them. What he wouldn't have given for a paved mini-mall, or a nice concrete parking structure, or a giant wood-chipper. As if they could hear them, the thoughts seemed to provoke the trees to further menace. Albert shook off the irrational attack of nerves and the trees turned back into harmless wood and needles. The storm that had hit while they'd been at the Roadhouse had wound down and the sun was just edging past the grey masses of clouds still hovering overhead. Albert tapped the steering wheel and smothered the desire to switch on the radio. There wouldn't be anything to listen to out here anyway.

"Can't wait to get back to the concrete jungle?" Cooper was watching him, doing that mind-reading thing again. "I realize this has been more than you expected, Albert. What we witnessed this afternoon--"

"I don't know what I saw. I don't know if I want to know."

Coop nodded. "Some things go beyond our understanding."

"What I _understand_ is that Palmer killed three girls, including his own daughter. The rest..."

"Temporary insanity?"

Albert glanced sidelong at Coop, but the other man wasn't smiling. And for a moment he was sitting in an office in Philadelphia, listening to Cooper's detached voice as he predicted the murder of the young blonde girl who would turn out to be Laura Palmer as if prophecy was an every day occurrence in the FBI. He'd forgotten until now. "How did you know?"

A lift of Cooper's shoulders. "Laura told me. I just couldn't remember what she'd said until today."

Laura told him. Right. Albert gripped the wheel and ignored the trees. "Palmer said he saw her. That she welcomed him."

"When he died, you mean." Albert nodded. "You're wondering how he could see her as forgiving him for what he did?"

"He raped and murdered her then dumped her in the river." Albert felt himself throttling the steering wheel and consciously relaxed his fists.

Cooper sighed. "Yes, he did."

"And you gave him absolution." He hadn't meant to raise his voice, had startled himself, though the man beside him remained unruffled.

"Is that what you saw?"

"I don't know what I saw," Albert repeated, feeling a sullen as a spoiled kid.

"And that bothers you?"

"Yes, it fucking bothers me. What I don't get is why it doesn't bother you."

Cooper scrubbed at his eyes. For a moment he looked twenty years older than he should have and infinitely exhausted. "I know what you're feeling, Albert. I know the doubt and the fear. I've been there. And the only thing I learned from it is that there are no logical answers for these kinds of questions. If you try too hard to find them they'll drive you insane."

At his words something hard and twisted in Albert's chest loosened and melted away. While it was far from okay, whatever had happened that day no longer felt lodged in his side like a thorn. Cooper's little side trips into la-la land might give Albert the willies - not to mention a migraine the size of Kansas - but there was no denying that whatever channel he was tuned into usually produced something concrete to work with. Eventually. And as much as Albert wanted to, dismissing BOB as a madman's guilt-induced hallucination was hard to do when he took into consideration that the Pulaski girl had unequivocally placed the ghoul at the train car where Laura Palmer was killed.

"So what next?"

Cooper left off his study of the trees outside the car and blinked. "I don't know."

Though the answer wasn't a surprise, somehow it wasn't the comfort Albert had expected it to be. And when Truman met them in the lobby of the station with mugs of fresh coffee, Albert saw his own doubts reflected in the sheriff's face. They all looked to Cooper to navigate these strange waters. To realize he was working without a map, well... where did that leave them? Albert clamped down on his questions, and when Cooper declared that he'd rather discuss the afternoon's events outside in the fresh air he followed without a word.


End file.
